Eloquent Silence

by Weise, Margaret

  ‘Finished your shopping, dear?’ asked Annette when the others had wound down.

  ‘Yes. Just need to get some bird seed for Killer. We’re going to watch the fairy penguins tonight, you know. I inherited him from a friend. I think he knows me almost as well as I know myself, looking out from those steely little eyes of his. He’s a force to be reckoned with if I don’t feed him on time.’

  They parted with an air of hilarity, already looking forward to the next opportunity to confess and confide in a fortnight’s time.

  12. Morning Tea With Buddy

  During the school holidays, Buddy, aged six, liked to come to work with me for the day. This was a combined treat and babysitting arrangement that we both enjoyed. We usually made the arrangements for a Friday, as I finished work at 12:30. He enjoyed playing with my felt pens, rubber stamps and stamp pad, scissors, glue, old fashioned adding machine and electric typewriter, my tools of trade in my Public Service office.

  On this particular Friday morning he settled into my office very quickly, spreading his equipment out on the two desks and over every available inch of walking space. Sheets of A4 paper, discarded adding machine rolled paper, pens and bits of sticky tape, old envelopes and cutout men soon littered the office. Within half an hour Buddy had succeeded in covering both desks and had happily invaded every inch of available space except the safe where I kept the money.

  However, he did all this in the nicest possible way and I never thought to object.

  As a cashier for the Defense Force, around and about and over his head, I paid out thousands of dollars worth of claims by cash and check to other employees of the Defense Department. Fearing the claims would end up with a drawing of his sister on them, I locked them in the safe to be dealt with on Monday when I would have a little room to spread my ledgers around. Meanwhile, I looked in vain for a spot where I could count my cash delivery and do a balance when the money arrived. Nothing. This, too, had to be postponed until Monday.

  Armaguard arrived to deliver a large amount of money and I continued to do battle with Buddy’s works of art until I found a spot where I could reconcile the cash delivery. Still there was not enough room to place the ledgers on a desk and record the transaction. I surrendered to the inevitable and counted the cash amongst his rough copies of ‘Flopsy and Mopsy’, the story he was preparing to type up shortly.

  Morning tea time came around. We downed tools and made ourselves a cuppa. Buddy took his tea and I took my coffee out onto the front steps of the building into the sunshine. Buddy settled in and felt like a little confidential chat.

  ‘Aunty Lauren said you made her a cotton wool sandwich when she was little, Nan. Why did you do that?’ he asked me curiously.

  Feeling a touch of guilt for this barbarity, I replied, ‘The doctor told me to give her that because she had eaten a pin, Buddy.’

  He considered this in silence for a while as he munched his chocolate chip biscuit. He must have decided it was an acceptable action to take and wondered what the consequences were.

  ‘So what happened then?’ He swung around to make eye contact with me so that he would not miss any essential information. His blue eyes swept my face as he tried to make out what kind of monster was hiding within the skin of his grandmother.

  ‘The cotton wool was supposed to wrap around the pin and pass through her,’ I explained, unable to be any clearer than this, unfortunately.

  He mused over the mechanics of this, opened his mouth a couple of times to ask a question but must have decided to do so would not be seemly. Eventually he seemed to have worked out the hang of it for himself and commenced chewing happily on his biscuit again.

  ‘Mmm.’ Some more reflection, then, ‘Did Daddy ever eat anything like that when he shouldn’t have, Nan?’

  ‘Your Daddy tells me that his first memory is of crawling around the kitchen floor and finding a button under the kitchen dresser. He said he popped it in his mouth and ate it when I wasn’t looking,’ I told Buddy, smiling at the mind-picture I had of his father crawling around the kitchen floor.

  ‘Did you make him a cotton wool sandwich?’ Buddy was pleased to be getting the low-down on the skeletons rattling in the family cupboard and liked the way this conversation was turning out.

  ‘No, because I didn’t see him eat the button and he was too little to tell me, so I didn’t know,’ I told hm. ‘He couldn’t talk then.’

  ‘Where’s the button now, do you think, Nan?’ Buddy asked seeming fascinated with whereabouts of this illicit object.

  ‘I guess it’s probably passed through him by now, Buddy,’ I laughed. Daddy has reached and passed his twenty-eighth birthday.

  ‘Oh.’ Another chocolate chip biscuit and some rainbow cake later—

  ‘What else did they eat that was naughty?’ He seemed certain there was more dirt in the family archives and was really getting some inside information now.

  ‘Your Aunty Lauren ate some tablets that I had in my dressing table drawer. Daddy found some asprin in a box that Grandad used to take fishing with him. The box was under the house. Daddy managed to eat all the asprin, which must have been pretty hard. He and Aunty Lauren had to have their stomachs pumped out. Not at the same time, of course.’

  ‘How did you do that?’ Furrowed brow and large blue eyes.

  Family history was something of a marvel to Buddy at that moment in time.

  I explained the rudiments of the process to him as best I could but I hadn’t actually seen the pumping out taking place. He was quite impressed, though, simply by the thought of it all.

  ‘What about Aunty Jill? Did she eat anything wrong?’ Buddy was enjoying getting the lowdown on his relations.

  ‘Not that I knew of.’ Suddenly, I was sorry to disappoint him.

  ‘Were they all naughty when they were little?’ A hopeful glance in my direction and an intimate little smile of encouragement.

  ‘No. Not very. Jill was very busy. She ran full pelt all day long and asked questions non-stop. But she wasn’t really very naughty, just a bit tiring. Lauren and Daddy were very quiet children, but the girls used to argue back and forth fairly often. ‘You did.’ ‘I didn’t.’ ‘I was.’ ‘You weren’t.’ That kind of thing.’

  ‘Like that?’ asked Buddy, thinking I guess of similar altercations between himself and his small sister.

  ‘Yes, lots of that kind of thing went on some days. Daddy tried swearing when he was four or five and I washed his mouth out with soap.’

  ‘Hmmm!’ said Buddy, and mulled over this with a smile, no doubt having wished to be a part of the drama.

  We sat on for a while, enjoying the mild winter day, both wrapped in our own thoughts. I recalled the previous winter when we had gone for a day out to Southbank Park in Brisbane.

  The time came for Buddy to go to the toilet and my Prince Charming had taken him to the men’s block.

  ‘I know how to spell ‘sex’ but don’t tell Nan,’ Buddy had confided man to man to Prince Charming. ‘S.E.X.’ said Buddy, with a preschool lisp.

  ‘What did you say, Buddy? F.E.X?’ asked Prince Charming as they emerged from the toilet block.

  ‘No,’ shouted Buddy at the top of his lungs. ‘I said S.E.X.’

  He drew a few glances with that one! Prince Charming would have liked to distance himself from the child, I guessed, knowing him as well as I did by that time.

  The thought of Buddy and Prince Charming reminded me of the time when PC and I were engaged, or rather PC had bought me a ring and I was engaged but PC was only pretending to be. It seemed like a good idea to him at the time for reasons that I never could fathom.

  Buddy had felt he and I should have a little heart to heart talk about my marriage to PC, illuminating me as to the working of the birds and bees.

  ‘When you and Ambrose get married will you stop going to work and stay at home to look after the babies?’ he asked in his large-blue-eyed way.

  ‘We weren’t planning on having any babies, Buddy,’ I told
him gently. ‘We think we’re a bit too old.’

  ‘Well, they just seem to come along whether you want them or not,’ he informed me confidentially. ‘You might even have three or four,’ he warned, shaking his head with concern.

  ‘Thank you for telling me, Buddy. I’ll be sure to remember what you said,’ I promised gratefully.’

  Sitting outside the office building, his voice brought me back to the present.

  ‘No wonder you like working here, Nan. There’s not much to do, is there?’

  ‘No, love, not much to do.’

  I thought about my unfinished weekly return, my ledgers that needed to be filled, my daily balance that I had no hope of getting done.

  ‘Better than being a doctor, hey, Nan?’

  ‘Yes,’ I laughed. ‘I’d be sure to kill off all my patients.’

  ‘Hurry up and drink your coffee, Nan and we’ll go and type up ‘Flopsy and Mopsy’. What do you do when I don’t come to work with you, Nan?’ he asked inquisitively.

  ‘Sweetheart, I really don’t know!’

  13. Crying Over You

  And the king was much moved, and went up into the chamber over the gate and wept and as he went he said, ‘Oh, my son, Absolom, my son, my son, Absolom! Would that I had died for thee, oh Absolom, my son, my son!

  Bible

  How is it death enters our lives so suddenly, so remorselessly? Creeping up and pouncing like a tiger in the night, teeth bared, mouth slavering. How is it death alters the mood and the shape of our days with relentless finality? No closure possible. An unfinished life, a merciless retreat of the soul to another plane. Jaw-dropping shock that a youngster has chosen to leave this imperfect world before their allotted time has run out. Sinister, agonizing, endless pain after the tragic event has been accomplished.

  Cruelly like an assassin who halts us suddenly in our tracks, causing us to spin, head ringing, eyes unfocused, on the cusp of the freedom of a dream that will never eventuate now. Poised there, we are struggling to come to terms with the overwhelming contradiction of a young life gone forever, pointlessly. Now he will always be dead. He will never be not-dead again, his delicate features frozen for Eternity. Should he flounder and wish to return he will find the doorway padlocked and barred to him. What are the guidelines on how to be dead. Are there any for how to be undead? Not-dead. Regretfully, there is no out for him.

  The telephone ringing in the dead of night jangles us up out of sleep, startled and puzzled. The doorbell trills alarmingly in the early morning stillness before dawn, striking urgent warning into our hearts. A shake of our head, disoriented, sleep-clogged. Confusion. Disorientation. A multitude of thoughts come and go in a second. Astonishment and a nebulous fear in the inky blackness of the night and the mind.

  He would have been twenty if he were alive today, but he left the world on his eighteenth birthday in the still, early hours somewhere between midnight and dawn on the anniversary of his birth. He took my palpitating heart with him into extinction. It is not a matter of choice for me. I am destroyed by forces inside and outside of myself. Clearly, I cannot hope to get myself back on track.

  I, who had taken for granted I would live forever, found only the helpless tenderness I’d felt for him all his life remaining in my soul. He, my son, would live forever, too, I had supposed. Who will fill the black hole he has left in my life? An eternal shimmering hole leading to straight to Hell.

  This is how death mutates our future, alters our expectations, shifts our world view. When the telephone rings I may think for a split second that it will be him calling to ask how I am, but it won’t be him now, not ever. When the doorbell rings and the pudgy old dog rockets loudly to the door, I may have a quick flash of expectation that it’s him on the other side, but it will never be him. Not ever. As I gaze into the endless distance before me I try to accept I will never see him appear on the horizon of my future.

  Unlicensed to drive on that fatal December day, he will not grow older, not be expert enough to obtain a driver’s license so that he can drive to my house. He is frozen eternally at eighteen, never aging, never changing. Always eighteen, my Benji, my beloved corpse, with his smattering of freckles on his bland, disinterested face, his skin startingly translucent and pale, his neck looking fit to choke beneath the tight, white collar of his school uniform.

  He will never seek to find a significant other, never cause me to become a grandmother, nor come to my funeral in the flesh. Are there any guidelines on how to be a mother bereft of her child? What are the standards I am supposed to meet on this journey into Hell? What will his father expect of me; his stepmother; his peer group?

  When I go to visit him at the funeral home the following day, this is what I find and it is destined to haunt my dreams forever more, this pale, bland, disinterested face, startlingly translucent, permanently frozen. I thought at that moment my heart would simply burst with sorrow.

  He was beautiful, so beautiful and I loved him so, loved him so because of his gentleness and vulnerability. Mea culpa, to love him and not to be able to save him. I feel an astounding rush of love for him, knowing as I do that he is not present to acknowledge it. Thin to the point of wiriness, his lanky body lies at rest for eternity.

  Silent me, mostly silent, speaking only to find my words misinterpreted, words of love and concern transposed into self-seeking words, manipulating for my own ends, purposely misunderstood so as to keep me in my place. Problematic me, who knows only too well that what is done cannot be undone. Trusting in my instincts for self-preservation I say as little as possible and feel that even this is too much. Can they take the high moral ground and blame me for this outcome in some way that I cannot imagine?

  Things get in the way of love; circumstances that can’t be helped or avoided. Sometimes our absorption in ourselves and our own lives, or a mistaken sense of duty leads us away from where we should be concentrating our efforts at parenthood. I tried to get close to Benji from my remote home, thinking he was in trouble, but underestimating his life-draining emotions.

  My useless brain is stuffed with meaningless clutter about what he would have done with his life had he survived this moment in time. Dreams abandoned, sadness to be borne alone by me in my solitude. Going back is not an option for either Benji or me.

  I lost custody of Benji and his brothers, Paul and Andrew to my ex-husband, Joel, he of the hawklike profile and the flashing eyes. Paul was five, Benji, six and Andrew, eight. By then, after a bitter custody battle, I was a hundred years old, as I have been ever since the judge pronounced the boys’ best interest would be served if they lived in a ‘normal’ home with two parents. Apparently I could not provide them with a ‘normal’ home even though I had been doing it all their lives since their father absconded when they were hardly more than babies.

  I have ceased to marvel at my perceived incompetence. The problem is insoluble and I was never resigned to the verdict that left me tossed by the wayside of their lives, collateral damage of a marriage gone wrong.

  Thus they went, complete with bag and baggage, to live fifty miles away with my ex-husband and his new young wife, Poppy Lee, second in line after myself and following Anya, a bright young miss with a voice full of irritation. Third in line, actually, the beautiful Poppy Lee with her long, almond eyes glinting with perfectionism and self confidence. Might as well have sent my sons to another planet. Shipped them off fiendishly to Mars or the moon.

  I shuddered at the awfulness of my loss while the judge droned on about stability and security, sounds that were barely comprehensible issuing from his whiskery mouth. Sounds like, ‘furthermore and transition and incapable,’ in his lofty, oily voice while I nursed the great hollowness inside me, the loss of my boys.

  I was as good as deprived of access to the boys many times when their father, a school teacher, was transferred hither and yon, first with his second wife, Anya, and their new family when he would hold fast to the boys, often against their wishes for long periods of time. Then he an
d his third wife took me to court to claim full custody of my three children.

  Because of work commitments and other considerations, I simply could not up anchor and follow them willy nilly around the country. I had to live a settled, stable life to preserve my sanity and to keep my employment so as to keep a roof over my head for when the boys were with me, to feed them and supply their clothing which their father and his wives did not seem to notice they had outgrown.

  Time is supposed to be merciful and I prayed that time would heal my open, bleeding wounds. Nothing lasts forever, I always told myself, and things could not get any worse than they already were. But now they had.

  There were many times I did not see my sons for months on end, until my annual holiday allowed me to travel the hundreds of miles between us. Joel refused to bring or send them to me. Too much strain for Poppy Lee and the babies and the other children of the second short-lived marriage. The boys, my long-limbed, wiry boys had sports camp on the school holidays and so on and so on.....always a story, always an excuse, obstacles enough to destroy a mother’s hope.

  I did not dare to complain or this was seen to be selfish words spoken by an embittered, manipulating woman, locked into a stance used by maneuvering mothers meddling in lives and trying to alter outcomes. Better to be quiet than to be considered intrusive and lose the little contact I had. Must be rational and laid back at all costs or else. Or else they would see me as unstable and obliterate any contact with my sons. God forbid that I should express myself above a self-effacing whisper.

  Watching, waiting for letters, phone calls, never giving an opinion under any circumstances, unable to state gut feelings for the boys’ sakes. Removed from being able to halt the roller-coaster ride. Having to watch and listen only or lose the small amount of family time I was able to enjoy.